Bojan took the winning photo after waiting patiently in the Sekoyner River in Tanjung Puting National Park in Borneo, Indonesia. After spending several days on a houseboat photographing orangutans in the park, Bojan learned of a location where a male orangutan had crossed the river –­ unusual behavior that he knew he had to capture. After waiting a day and night near the suspected location, a ranger spotted the orangutan the next morning at a spot a few minutes up the river. As they drew near, Bojan decided to get into the water so the boat did not scare the primate. About five feet deep in a river supposedly home to freshwater crocodiles, Bojan captured the photo when the orangutan peeked out from behind a tree to see if the photographer was still there.

On capturing the photo, Bojan said, “Honestly, sometimes you just go blind when things like this happen. You’re so caught up. You really don’t know what’s happening. You don’t feel the pain, you don’t feel the mosquito bites, you don’t feel the cold, because your mind is completely lost in what’s happening in front of you.”

Karim Iliya of Haiku, Hawaii, won first place in the Landscapes category for a photo from Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park; Jim Obester of Vancouver, Wash., won first place in the Underwater category for a photo of an anemone; and Todd Kennedy of New South Wales, Australia, won first place in the Aerials category for a photo of a rock pool in Sydney at high tide.

The judges for the contest were National Geographic magazine’s senior photo editor of natural history assignments, Kathy Moran, National Geographic photographer Anand Varma, and photographer Michaela Skovranova.

Contestants submitted photographs in four categories – Wildlife, Landscape, Aerials and Underwater – through National Geographic’s photography community, Your Shot. All of the winning photos, along with the honorable mentions, may be viewed at natgeo.com/photocontest.

1st Place/Grand Prize:

A male orangutan peers from behind a tree while crossing a river in Borneo, Indonesia.

2nd Place:

An adult Caribbean pink flamingo feeds a chick in Yucatán, Mexico. Both parents alternate feeding chicks, at first with a liquid baby food called crop milk, and then with regurgitated food.

3rd Place:

Two grey herons spar as a white-tailed eagle looks on in Hungary.

Honorable Mention

A Japanese macaque indulges in some grooming time on the shores of the famous hot springs.

People’s Choice

A great gray owl swoops to kill in a New Hampshire field.

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1st Place:

Shortly before twilight in Kalapana, Hawai’i, a fragment of the cooled lava tube broke away, leaving the molten rock to fan in a fiery spray for less than half an hour before returning to a steady flow.

2nd Place:

Sunlight glances off mineral strata of different colors in Dushanzi Grand Canyon, China.

3rd Place:

A summer thunderstorm unleashes lightning on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.

Honorable Mention

Morning fog blurs the dead trees of Romania’s Lake Cuejdel, a natural reservoir created by landslides.

2nd Place:

3rd Place:

Buoyed by the Gulf Stream, a flying fish arcs through the night-dark water five miles off Palm Beach, Florida.

Honorable Mention

Preparing to strike, tarpon cut through a ribbon-like school of scad off the coast of Bonaire in the Caribbean Sea.

People’s Choice

A Portuguese man-of-war nears the beach on a summer morning; thousands of these jellyfish wash up on Australia’s eastern coast every year.

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1st Place:

In Sydney, Australia, the Pacific Ocean at high tide breaks over a natural rock pool enlarged in the 1930s. Avoiding the crowds at the city’s many beaches, a local swims laps.

2nd Place:

Snow-covered metasequoia trees, also called dawn redwoods, interlace over a road in Takashima, Japan.

3rd Place:

On the flanks of Kilauea Volcano, Hawai’i, the world’s only lava ocean entry spills molten rock into the Pacific Ocean. After erupting in early 2016, the lava flow took about two months to reach the sea, six miles away.

Honorable Mention

Migratory gulls take flight from a cedar tree being washed downstream by a glacial river in British Columbia, Canada.

People’s Choice

Green vegetation blooms at the river’s edge, or riparian, zone of a meandering canyon in Utah.